<p>Any thoughts?</p>
<p>D says, "Russian easy, French hard." She thinks that if you're majoring in Spanish you also have to take some Portugese. </p>
<p>Smith runs JYA programs that are French or Italian based, thus they get a lot of attention. Some of the non-Smith Spanish-speaking JYA programs are fairly popular too.</p>
<p>Fwiw, I think D found one of the Intermediate French classes to be the toughest in terms of grading and I once heard a student wail that her GPA would be just great if not for her [unknown to me] language classes for JYA.</p>
<p>As with many things, I suppose YMMV.</p>
<p>French is honestly a so-so department. The classes aren't anything special, and you can get by with doing very little daily homework in the upper classes if you have a general idea of what you're doing. The point of the French dept. at Smith is to get you ready for JYA, which they do in a sufficient, if not particularly thrilling way.</p>
<p>TD: Does Russian=easy mean that the classes are easy, or does it mean that you don't wind up learning the language?</p>
<p>HeyLA, my sense...an this is D's sense from a friend of hers, so this opinion is like a photocopy of a photocopy...is that the classes are easy, not that you don't wind up learning the language. </p>
<p>S&P, I think my D had to scramble to keep up with her French homework every day, it was as bad as the math problem sets but different. Otoh, I think she said that she'd heard that the upper-level classes were actually easier. It's also possible that this was an artifact of her taking 20 units...I'll ask her when next I get a chance.</p>
<p>The Italian Department is superb. They will work you very hard - they assume everyone is starting from scratch, but at the end of two years are able to go JYA to Italy with a pledge not to use any English. Italian is one of the few departments that offers graduate degrees.</p>
<p>My d. says they are by far the "best-dressed" department at Smith.</p>
<p>the Italian dept. may be the best dressed over all, but my Parisian French prof easily gave them a run for their money ;-). </p>
<p>TD - I guess what I should say about the French dept. is that you get a lot of homework, but in the upper level classes you can very easily not do it and never get caught. I don't reccommend this to anyone as a study habit, but I also had 20 credits and French took last priority (I ended up taking it pass/fail to alleviate some pressure). So yes, French is hard in the sense that you'll have lots of exercises to do, but easy in the sense that you generally determine your own level of committment.</p>
<p>Ah, there may be the rub: D won't take any Smith class "pass/fail" because she has a whole semester of "pass/fail" awaiting her in Budapest and the competitive law schools look askance at too many "pass/fail" grades on the transcript.</p>
<p>Ah, I took Russian myself :)</p>
<p>It's REALLY easy- the professor makes it so. She is SO SO SO sweet and nice that you can't help but appreciate her generosity and caring personality. It's amazing that in my class of 29 kids, she tries very hard to get everyone involved during class- whether it's conversational practice or reading aloud. She will go over things at least a million times, until everyone gets the material. Her quizzes are ridiculously easy and predictable. Tests, eh, tough at times. There are definitely no mid-term or final exams-very, very sweet. The class average tends to be around A-. But if you really want an A, you'll have to work just a LITTLE harder.</p>
<p>But remember, once you're doing Smith's Russian (or German too), you will not be able to transite to another program (like summer programs) at the rate you're going at because it doesn't do as many contact hours as other languages so therefore, you won't have as much practice as other students. But if you're talking Italian, Spanish, or French, you'll be on par with other programs.</p>
<p>I don't know why but it's Smith's way of making students comfortable with foreign language, especially difficult ones like Russian and German (AHHHHH all those cases!!!!)</p>
<p>Let's see what cases I remember from Russian... Nominating, Dating, Genital, and Accusative.</p>
<p>Bolshoyeh spaseboh, spaseboh ee dobri vecheri.</p>
<p>Remind me not to take Russian or German!</p>
<p>I'll stick with francais any day ;)</p>
<p>Say bien entendu.</p>
<p>TD- you forgot one more: instrumental :)</p>
<p>Don't shun Russian ASAP... it's so awesome to be able to read the Cyrillic alphabet and a lot of Russian is borrowed from French and some of the more modern words (think 20th century) are from English (like photograph and computer). Even now, I can still read out random Russian at museum exhibits and resturants. It's a fun way to impress your family and friends :)</p>
<p><let's see="" what="" cases="" i="" remember="" from="" russian...="" nominating,="" dating,="" genital,="" and="" accusative.=""></let's></p>
<p>AHAHAHA. sorry, I just choked on my own eyeballs at "genital case". genitive. dative. nominative. </p>
<p>oh yeah! and prepositional (my personal favourite!)</p>
<p>so if I took a year of intensive russian, and I have an excellent accent, BUT I can't spell worth a damn and don't have a very wide vocab, do you think it's worth it for me to start at the beginning?</p>
<p>Bea -- You'll have to take a placement exam during orientation. I would do that, and then just see where they put you. Usually, they don't put you in the very beginning courses unless you have no experience whatsoever, so they'll probably place you in one of the intermediate sections.</p>